What's with the bizarre timing of Hitler's characterization of British hostility in November 1937

[raharris1973]

In the Hossbach Memorandum of meeting with his advisors in November 1937, Hitler announced that it was imperative to act at some time within the next five or six years before "two hate-inspired antagonists", Britain and France, closed the gap in the arms race in which, Hitler noted, Germany was already falling behind.

The timing appears quite strange for *this* to be the moment for Hitler to revise his view of Britain from a potential ally in Mein Kampf (1925) and his Second Book (1928) to a "hate-filled antagonist".

This came after the French non-reaction to the Rhineland reoccupation and Anglo-French non-support of the Spanish Republic and support of the Non-Intervention Committee and Non-Intervention Agreement. It came a couple years after the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935.

In the case of considering France hostile I guess I get it because it was Popular Front government with a Jewish Deputy Prime Minister that had land Germany wanted and that did let some international volunteers travel on to Spain, and did maintain some encircling alliances. OK - hostile, even if not vigorously so.

But Britain? Firmly under Conservative hegemony, just elected Chamberlain with Appeasement in full flower and much of the Conservative party rooting for Franco.

So where's the hostility? Was it the dashing of 'unrealistic expectations'? Although a successful gambler years Hitler did have many unrealistic expectations to put it mildly. Perhaps his pro-British statements in his earlier works were based on Anglo-French disputes over the Ruhr occupation, and to be considered non-hostile to Germany, Britain would have had to go beyond the Anglo-German Agreement to silencing its Hitler critical left-wing and clearly demonstrated it was coordinating its policies at least as much with Berlin, if not Paris, if not moving to outright alliance.

 

[sillygoose]

You have to be careful of the Hossbach memo. It was written 5 days after the event based on memory and was not reviewed by anyone else who had been there and might have been edited later on.

Hossbach Memorandum - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The accuracy of the memorandum has been questioned, as the minutes were drawn up five days after the event by Hossbach from notes that he took at the meeting and also from memory. Also, Hitler did not review the minutes of the meeting; instead he insisted, as he commonly did, that he was too busy to bother with such small details. British historian A. J. P. Taylor contended that the manuscript that was used by the prosecution in the Nuremberg Trials appears to be a shortened version of the original, as it had passed through the US Army before the trial.

Taylor also stipulated that the meeting was most likely a piece of internal politics, and he pointed out that Hitler could have been trying to encourage the gathering's members to put pressure on the Reich Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht, to release more funding for rearmament. In fact, Schacht soon resigned in protest of the pre-eminence of rearmament in Nazi economics. Contending historians have also pointed out that rearmament is an integral part of a preparation for conflict. In response, Taylor argued that Hitler's policy was a bluff (he wished to rearm Germany to frighten and intimidate other states) to allow him to achieve his foreign policy goals without going to war.

It is often used by intentionalist historians such as Gerhard Weinberg, Andreas Hillgruber and Richard Overy to prove that Hitler planned to start a general European war, which became the Second World War, as part of a longtime master plan. However, functionalist historians such as Timothy Mason, Hans Mommsen and Ian Kershaw argue that the document shows no such plans, but the memorandum was an improvised ad hoc response by Hitler to the growing crisis in the German economy in the late 1930s.

Note that even a number of well-regarded historians, including British ones, have challenged the meaning and even accuracy of the document.

Also the original disappeared and only a type written copy from 1943 was passed to the British in 1945:

Hoßbach-Niederschrift – Wikipedia

de.wikipedia.org

In November 1943, Colonel Count Kirchbach from the War History Department of the General Staff had a copy made of the handwritten original, which was then kept in the OKW archives. In January 1944 he gave the copy to his brother-in-law Viktor von Martin, who passed it on to the British military government in autumn 1945 . This copy initially disappeared after 1945, which fueled allegations of forgery. The original had fallen into the hands of a team from the Allied High Command. A typewritten copy (the handwritten original could no longer be found) was used by the prosecution in the trial of the major war criminals presented as Evidence Document PS-386.

Given that we don't have the original and a random aristocratic general staff officer (center of the anti-Hitler resistance in the military) made his own copy that he gave to his cousin for safe keeping which later was given to the British the chain of custody is extremely suspect, especially given that it was one of the major documents used at the Nuremberg trials.

Hossbach was seriously opposed to what Hitler did in 1938 with the Blomberg-Fritsch affair and told Fritsch about the charges so that he, Hossbach, could give Hitler a direct message from Fritsch to refute the charges:

Friedrich Hossbach - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Hitler fired Hossbach when Hossbach passed along the message from Fritsch and explained what he had done.

Now that doesn't mean the document isn't somewhat accurate or that Hitler wasn't planning on an aggressive war, just that this particular document has a very dubious history with bizarre elements like all the stuff about Britain being an enemy right at the time that German-British relations were arguably close to their high point. My gut is that this document was not accurate and had been doctored or at least written up incorrectly by Hossbach himself, so don't put too much weight on this one particular source.

Edit
More info:

Lost, destroyed and classified important documents of WW2 - Page 2 - Axis History Forum

forum.axishistory.com

Quoted from: H. W. Koch, "Hitler and the Origins of the Second World War. Second Thoughts on the Status of Some of the Documents", The Historical Journal, 1/1968.
The original and the first copy of the Hossbach memorandum: "On 18 June 1946 Hossbach, upon the request of Dr. Laternser, the defence counsel of the General Staff and the OKW, submitted an affidavit in connexion with his testimony concerning the meeting at the Reich Chancellery on 5 November 1937. On oath Hossbach declared that he had made no protocol of the conference, instead a few days later (five to be exact) he wrote minutes based on his memory and written according to the best of his knowledge and conscience. In 1948 Hossbach published a book in which, in contradiction to his affidavit of 1946, he writes that the memorandum was based on notes made at the conference as well as on his own memory. The problem is further complicated by the subsequent history of the document.

Hossbach had made no copy besides the original which he handed over to Blomberg. From Blomberg the original apparently went to the OKH files at Liegnitz in Silesia where, towards the end of 1943, it was discovered by a general staff officer, Colonel Count von Kirchbach. Kirchbach, while leaving the original in its place of deposition, did make a copy which he handed to one of his relations, by whom the document was forwarded to the prosecution team of the first Nuremberg trials. It finally reached the floor at Nuremberg as Document PS-386. The considerable objections to Hitler's plans which Neurath, Blomberg and Fritsche put up are not recorded in it, and in consequence the document does not agree with Kirchbach's own copy. Hence, the original plus Kirchbach's own copy are missing."

At best the source is flawed and we also do not have the original, nor the copy, just the altered document published by the prosecution team used at Nuremberg.